Lathan Ransom has been no stranger to injuries during his Ohio State career.
Ransom broke his leg in the Rose Bowl at the end of the 2021 season, forcing him into a lengthy recovery process that sidelined him for most of the 2022 offseason. After coming back strong from that injury, Ransom missed the Buckeyes’ final five games of 2023 with a Lisfranc injury in his foot. Ransom has spent so much time with Ohio State’s athletic training staff, particularly physical therapist Adam Stewart, that they’ve become like family to him over the last three years.
“I always joke around (with Stewart) and be like, ‘Man, he's gonna be in my wedding’ 'cause of how much he's done for me here,” Ransom said.
So Ransom felt “a lot of frustration” when the injury bug bit him yet again in Ohio State’s loss to Oregon on Oct. 12. But with the help of Stewart and the rest of Ohio State’s athletic training staff, Ransom was able to get back on the field just three weeks later for the Buckeyes’ second marquee game of the season against Penn State.
“Y'all just see me come back, but y'all don't know the stuff that went behind the scenes to get back and to get right,” Ransom said. “But I'm feeling great now.”
The fact that Ransom suffered an injury in the Oregon game was unknown at the time as Ransom played all 68 of Ohio State’s defensive snaps against the Ducks. Ransom didn’t say Wednesday exactly when or how the injury happened or what the injury was, but said he wasn’t going to let it stop him from continuing to play in the Buckeyes’ four-quarter battle with the Ducks.
“I was just trying to focus on the game. ‘Cause I'm in the game, no one cares (that he was hurt). The game doesn't care. The fans don't care. That's something I've known and I've learned being here. So I was just trying to play the game the best for my team,” Ransom said.
The injury was significant enough that Ransom had to sit out the Buckeyes’ next game against Nebraska following their post-Oregon bye week. But it didn’t limit him in last week’s game at Penn State, where he played a crucial role in one of the most important plays of Ohio State’s 20-13 win over the Nittany Lions.
With Penn State facing 4th-and-goal at the 1-yard line on its final possession and needing a touchdown to tie the game, Ransom had a hunch which play Penn State was going to run. He figured the Nittany Lions were going to pass the ball after they were stopped on three straight runs, and he knew they were going to want to get the ball to their top playmaker, tight end Tyler Warren.
Thanks to the Buckeyes’ film study in the week leading up to the game, Ransom knew that one of Penn State’s favorite goal-line plays was to attempt to set a pick to free up Warren for a touchdown. So when the Nittany Lions decided to do exactly that, Ransom immediately broke toward Warren and got into perfect position in coverage to take Warren out of the play, forcing Drew Allar to go to his second read.
Ohio State’s other starting safety, Caleb Downs, did his own job just as well by blanketing Penn State’s No. 2 tight end Khalil Dinkins in coverage, and Allar’s pass fell incomplete, allowing Ohio State’s offense to run out the clock from there and secure a road win over the then-third-ranked team in the country.
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The @ohiostatefb defense makes a MASSIVE stop in Happy Valley
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“That's 100% what you practice shows up in the game. And I think that's the benefit of two veteran safeties and knowing the situation and the call and what's going to happen,” defensive coordinator Jim Knowles said this week when discussing that play. “Their reaction was spot-on. I mean, they just jumped the right guys and took it away. And it's tough playing that situation because you're in there defending the run and then you got to be able to cover those kind of routes. And they both did. I mean, Caleb made the play, but Latham jumped that route quickly, which took that away, which I think is a big deal.”
Ransom credited Ohio State safeties coach Matt Guerrieri with preparing him for that moment by identifying it as a play they’d need to watch out for if they ended up in that situation.
“I think Coach G does such a good job of showing us examples of what we might get and we've seen plays like that, pick to 44 right on the goal line as being one of their goal line go-to plays. And seeing them in that position, I knew that after three runs in a row that they were gonna definitely go to him,” Ransom said. “So I went to him and then Caleb made a great play. So that was just a great play all-around.”
The play also served as an example of how well Ransom and Downs are working together on the back end of Ohio State’s defense.
“We try to be the best two safeties on the field every time we step on the field,” Ransom said. “We're constantly competing to make plays and who's gonna play better. So having someone like that to push me every day, and I'm hoping to push him every day, is exciting and only making us better.”
Even though he had been sidelined for a couple of weeks, Ransom showed no signs of rust against Penn State as he played all but two of Ohio State’s 55 defensive snaps against the Nittany Lions. He recorded seven tackles with a pass breakup.
With Ransom back in the lineup, Ohio State’s defense made a statement against Penn State by preventing the Nittany Lions from scoring a single offensive touchdown while holding them under 300 yards of offense for the first time all season. While the Buckeyes struggled in the aforementioned game against Oregon, allowing 496 yards in their 32-31 loss, Ransom believes the defense’s performance against Penn State was much more indicative of what it truly is.
“Obviously we didn't play the way we wanted to at Oregon. But it's not like the defense changed players or we've changed a lot of stuff. I feel like we've been a dominant defense all year other than that game we didn't play well,” Ransom said. “And we addressed those issues and we knew what we had to fix and we got right back to doing what we did. And now we're back to playing the way we should be playing.”
